The Australian’s media editor Sharri Markson has landed an exclusive interview with Peta Credlin, who is prime minister Tony Abbott’s chief of staff, and therefore one of the most powerful women in the country, along with Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop.
Ms Credlin says she’s twice been asked to vacate a seat that had been put aside for an important person from the PM’s office: “Mr Peter Credlin.”
Each time, she’s explained that she – Peta –is that important person.
“There’s been occasions overseas where men won’t shake my hand because they assume at the start of a meeting I mustn’t be that important because of my gender,” Ms Credlin said. “After the meeting, they’re happy to shake my hand.”
Ms Credlin says she has wondered over the years whether conservative women are fair game in the gender wars, since she found few members of the ‘sisterhood’ willing to stick up for her, when her fertility became a political football.
Ms Credlin tried IVF for many years, keeping the expensive hormones in Mr Abbott’s office fridge, while she tried to have a baby. Her attempts have thus far been unsuccessful.
The member for Fairfax, Clive Palmer, apparently didn’t know about Ms Credlin’s agonizing and private struggle when he declared, wrongly, that Mr Abbott had designed a paid parental leave scheme “just so the Prime Minister’s chief-of-staff can receive a massive benefit when she gets pregnant”.
Ms Credlin said many of the women who leapt to Julia Gillard’s defence when she was declared “barren” were not there for her.
“This solidarity that women are supposed to have just wasn’t there,” she said.
Peta Credlin with Helen McCabe and the Women of the Future winners.
Ms Credlin decided it might be time to create a conservative women’s networking group, which Mr Abbott launched last week. More than 300 women attended to hear speeches by Ms Credlin and the first guest-speaker, The Australian Women’s Weekly’s own editor-in-chief Helen McCabe.
Ms Credlin quoted Julie Bishop (who was quoting former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) as saying “there’s a special place in hell reserved for women who don’t support other women.”
Here at The Weekly, we agree!
